Foot Fetish

What you see before you is Santa's early delivery of foot operated music controllers. The two on the right are brand new- I just returned from Errorzona with these in the Westy, and that's why I haven't blogged for awhile.

From left to right are:

The Roland GR-1 Guitar Synthesizer. The red guitar sports a digital pickup that generates two discrete digital signals per string for this black box. It contains 244 different musical instruments that can be played by picking and strumming the red guitar. You can mix different voices together to get something totally original. It will generate full orchestral effects or a simple tin flute... plus some really weird sounds that sonic engineers/rock musicians dream up during the intake of recreational chemicals. It has four foot pedals and various switches on the guitar and on the box itself. This was made decades ago and it's still way cool.

Numbah Two is a BOSS RC-50 Loop Station. Not long ago, BOSS bought Roland (or vice versa) and released this red and black 7 pedal device in 2005. It allows instantaneous recording of any sound plugged into it. It can instantly play back the track (called a phrase) and permits you to layer more sounds on top of the previous track. By switching the pedals on the Synth (above), I can lay down a bass track, then a rhythm track, a lead track, a vocal track and still have room to create two more full phrases. It has around 250 built-in drum styles and you can adjust the tempo to suit your song. It even has a USB port for downloading phrases created on the computer by yourself or maniacs on the internet. It's designed to create a full and complex sound during a live performance or allow total creative control if you want to try your hand (or foot) at composing.

Numero Tres is the sexy little black and silver Digitech Vocalist Live 4. This sound processor is designed to take your voice and adds effects. It basically creates a variety of voices that harmonize with you, taking its cues from whatever chords it hears from your guitar or keyboard (or synthesizer). It will add up to four additional voices plus your own for five. Choose between male and female singers, and some really strange presets like GIANT or ELF or BORG... You can sound like the Four Freshmen or Bob Dylan, too.

When they're all wired together you have access to just about any sound or effect you can dream up. They also all have MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) ports as another option for designing music. Later down the road , when I've assimilated all the manuals, I'll create a new YouTube musical encounter (of the Third Kind) and you can hear for yourself the beginnings of a New Age of Music... (did I really say New Age?)